Sleep well, citizens of Massachusetts. Your law enforcement officers will probably soon no longer be allowed to have sex with people they just arrested or detained.

The Legislature is preparing to tackle a bill that would make it illegal for any municipal police officer to "engage in sexual relations" with "anyone who is under arrest, in detention, otherwise in the actual custody of said officer, or who the officer is interacting within their official capacity."

In other words, book 'em, Danno. And then go home.

One complaint we often hear is that there are too many laws. But laws are similar to that maddening custom we call political correctness. Sometimes they sound ridiculous, but they did not spring from a vacuum and they exist for a reason.

The no-sex law between police and those in custody would close a legal loophole that could allow officers to claim sex on the job was consensual. According to the legislation crafted by two Democratic state representatives, a person under arrest is "incapable of consent to sexual relations" because of the inherent power wielded by the officers.

The bill would apply to municipal police, University of Massachusetts Police, State Police, MBTA officers, and environmental police. It is already illegal for a Massachusetts correctional officer to have sex with an inmate

I must be old-fashioned. I don't even think consensual sex between an arresting officer and the arrested suspect is a good idea. Nowadays, I guess that's downright Puritanical.

What depresses me about this proposed law is not that it's not needed, but that it apparently is. Sex between a cop and an accused law-breaker would seem to be a no-brainer governed by common sense, not the Massachusetts General Laws.

That assumption would have once been considered normal, but we live in an age of "the new normal." Everything is in play. The new normal really means no normal.

They do not deny the encounter. They claim it was consensual, according to a lawyer representing them.

In legal terms, that would mean it was not rape, and perhaps not even illegal, although the case caused New York to adopt a no-sex-with-the-suspects law. It was only stupid, idiotic, disgusting, vile and an abuse of the situation by men who were hired for jobs that require an above-average level of good judgment to be done well.

A Buzzfeed review of a Buffalo News database showed that at least 26 of 158 law enforcement officers charged with illegal sexual contact with a person in their custody had the charges dropped because of the consent defense.

The Chambers case will pit her word against the officers. Even if their version were true - and the court will decide that - did it occur to them that their active libidos could expose them to blackmail or other charges?

How 'bout this: it's just plain wrong. Obviously so and incredibly so. Do we always need a law on the books to tell us that?

About two-thirds of states do not specifically have a law against police engaging in sex with people in their custody. The sad statement is that any states would have to bother making a law against it at all.

Massachusetts is apparently one of those states. Former Salem police officer Brian Butler was arrested in 2016 on charges of raping a man in a police station.

The case is ongoing, but the legislators filing the bill told the Boston Globe that Butler's defense is "on the ground that the sexual activity was consensual."

It's difficult to see why the new bill wouldn't pass, but it's almost as difficult to understand why it should even be necessary. What's obvious to me, though, is evidently not obvious to everybody.

Welcome to the new normal - meaning, no normal whatsoever, but a law needed to govern every step we take and every thought we make.